21:35, 01 Април 2015»

Update 2 (1:50 p.m. EDT): Pemex has now confirmed four fatalities from today’s explosion and fire at a Pemex platform in the Bay of Campeche.

Update 1: Pemex has reported that 1 fatality has now been confirmed. The worker killed was a contractor from the company Cotemar, an oil services company based in Mexico. Pemex reported that it has received reports of 16 injured, including two with serious injuries.

MEXICO CITY, April 1 (Reuters) – Mexican state-run oil company Pemex said on Wednesday it had evacuated around 300 workers after a fire broke out on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, with local emergency services reporting that at least 45 people were injured.

Pemex said on Twitter that eight firefighting boats were tackling the blaze, which erupted overnight on the Abkatun Permanente platform in the oil-rich Bay of Campeche.

The platform forms part of the Abkatun-Pol-Chuc offshore complex. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, production at the complex has fallen steadily since the 1990s to below 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2013.

Mexico currently produces just under 2.3 million bpd.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the fire in the Gulf, which is home to Mexico’s biggest oil field.

Pemex has suffered a number of accidents in recent years, with at least 37 people killed by a blast at the company’s Mexico City headquarters in 2013. Another 26 people were killed at a fire in a Pemex natural gas facility in September 2012. (Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Bernadette Baum)